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Jewish Council for Public Affairs names Amy Spitalnick, who sued Charlottesville rally organizers, as its CEO
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Jewish Council for Public Affairs has tapped Amy Spitalnick, who spearheaded a successful multimillion-dollar lawsuit against neo-Nazis, as its next CEO.
The decision is a sign that the group, called the JCPA, is pursuing a more assertively liberal approach. For nearly 80 years, it was an umbrella for local Jewish community relations groups, and was affiliated with the Jewish Federations of North America, which has historically been driven by consensus across local Jewish communities. But in December, it split from the federation system and rebranded as a more explicitly progressive group.
The statement Monday announcing Spitalnick’s hire highlighted her work at the helm of Integrity First for America, the nonprofit that underwrote a successful lawsuit against the organizers of the deadly neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The statement emphasized fighting for democracy against hate as priorities, and called Spitalnick “a powerful national voice on issues of democracy, antisemitism, extremism, and hate.”
Spitalnick, 37, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she would focus on building relationships with other communities that are vulnerable to hatred and erosions in democracy.
“There needs to be an organization that wholeheartedly recognizes how deeply intertwined Jewish safety is with other communities’ safety and how bound up that all is in a broader fight for democracy at this moment, and builds the sorts of coalitions within and across communities that are essential to moving the needle,” she said.
The organization will remain nonpartisan, Spitalnick said, but she made no secret that she especially opposed many of the tropes peddled by Republicans including former President Donald Trump, who is a leading contender for the 2024 Republican nomination.
“We are grappling with a wave of anti democratic extremism that is deeply tied to rising bigotry and hate,” Spitalnick said. “And we see this in many forms — we see this with the attacks on immigrants and how so many of the conspiracy theories that underpin, for example, election lies, happen to utilize anti-immigrant and antisemitic conspiracy theories. We see this with the attacks on the trans community and on drag shows, where for example, neo-Nazis are using those attacks and those flashpoints to actively recruit for their violent antisemitic hate.”
Spitalnick was a communications official at J Street, the liberal Israel lobby, before transitioning into the rough-and-tumble of New York politics as the communications director for Mayor Bill DeBlasio and then in the state attorney general’s office. Last year, she was named director of another progressive Jewish group, Bend the Arc, but ultimately declined the position.
She earned a reputation for giving as good as she would get from her bosses’ critics and rivals. An email exchange she had with Tucker Carlson in 2015 made headlines when Carlson and his colleagues lambasted her with misogynist and vulgar language.
She was characteristically blunt last week after Carlson’s firing from Fox News after a history of using racially charged language. “When reporters write the story of Tucker Carlson, do not gloss over who he is,” she wrote on Twitter . “He is a raging white supremacist, misogynist, and bigot who has done more to normalize violent extremism and hate over the last few years than nearly anyone else.”
Spitalnick’s style is a sharp departure from the tone that the 79-year old organization had taken until December, when it announced an amicable divorce from the Jewish federations structure and its emphasis on consensus. It also means the group will be led by a millennial woman, a rarity among large national Jewish organizations.
“This now makes two millennial women at the helm of legacy Jewish organizations,” said Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women. “I’m looking forward to getting in good trouble together as we push Jewish organizations and leaders toward justice.”
Founded in 1944 as the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council — it changed its name in 1997 — the storied group was at the forefront of Jewish community advocacy for decades, from rescuing Europe’s Jews and opening up immigration to allow refugees to enter the United States to the Black-Jewish civil rights coalition, pro-Israel advocacy and advocacy for Jews in the Soviet Union. It received funding from dues paid by scores of local Jewish Community Relations Councils and from 16 national Jewish groups.
In recent years, as the American — and American Jewish — populations became more politically polarized, JCPA’s consensus-driven structure made it increasingly difficult for the group to take noteworthy stands on the issues of the day.
A turning point was the group’s decision in 2020 to sign a statement recognizing Black Lives Matter as a leading civil rights body. Officials in the Jewish federations system, which underwrote much of JCPA’s funding at the time, thought it was reckless to endorse a movement despised by most Republicans, and which has been accused of vehement opposition to Israel.
That spurred an effort to roll the JCPA directly into the Jewish Federations of North America, a shift that JCPA defenders said would place Jewish community relations under the purview of major donors, who tend to be more conservative than the grassroots.
Instead, the current chairman, David Bohm, led a split from the Jewish federations that would guarantee JCPA’s independence. Bohm and one of his predecessors, Lois Frank, joined UJA-Federation of New York in providing a substantial cash influx that would allow JCPA to function for three years.
That led to the divorce from the Jewish federations, and the end of dues that had come into the organization from the local and national groups. A JCPA official said Spitalnick would be expected to diversify the funding base, and did not count out a return to the dues-paying format.
Freed of the fear of alienating a multitude of stakeholders, the announcement in December laid out two prongs that located JCPA robustly in the liberal camp: One would focus on “voting rights, election integrity, disinformation, extremism as a threat to democracy, and civics education.” The other would focus on “racial justice, criminal justice reform and gun violence, LGBTQ rights, immigration rights, reproductive rights, and fighting hate violence.”
Bohm, in restructuring JCPA, brought in the heads of two local community relations councils — Jeremy Burton of Boston and Maharat Rori Picker Neiss of St. Louis, who had previously said the old structure — and its inhibitions — made it increasingly irrelevant. The JCPA announcement this week came with quotes from Neiss and Burton lavishing praise on Spitalnick.
“Through her unwavering commitment to social justice and her demonstrated leadership in public policy advocacy, Amy is poised to usher in a new era of progress and impact for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs,” Neiss said.
The release said JCPA would continue “to support a democratic, Jewish, and secure state of Israel” but otherwise did not address the divisions over democracy and the judiciary currently roiling the country and its supporters abroad. It also didn’t address the erosion of support for Israel on the American left in an era when Israel’s governments have trended increasingly to the right.
Asked about differences between the Jewish community and other communities over Israel, Spitalnick said it was important not to cut out other communities. “It means working across those differences where possible, and building those relationships, and sometimes that means staying at the table even if we have fundamental disagreements,” she said.
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Joe Kent Suggests Israel Behind Charlie Kirk Assassination, Controls US Foreign Policy in Tucker Carlson Interview
National Counterterrorism Center Director Joseph Kent attends a House Homeland Security hearing entitled “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland,” on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, Dec. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
After Joe Kent, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, resigned in protest of President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran, he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast on Wednesday.
While on the podcast, Kent, who resigned from his position on Tuesday, argued that Israel dragged the US into the war against the Iranian regime, suggested that Israel may have been involved in the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, claimed that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and said that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Themes of Israel controlling US policy and conspiracy theories about Kirk’s assassination have become commonplace on Carlson’s podcast in recent months.
“We don’t know what happened with Charlie Kirk. I’m not saying the Israelis did this — I’m saying there are a lot of unanswered questions there, and there’s enough data to say there’s a good chance that President Trump feels he is under threat,” Kent said.
“The last time I saw Charlie Kirk on this earth was in June, in the West Wing stairway,” Kent said on Carlson’s podcast. “And he said very loudly to me … ‘Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran.’ Very loudly. He was single-minded.”
“So, when one of President Trump’s closest advisers who was vocally advocating against a war with Iran is suddenly publicly assassinated, and we’re not allowed to ask questions about that — it’s a data point. A data point that we need to look into,” Kent said, suggesting that Israel may have something to do with the assassination.
There has been no evidence to support claims of Israeli involvement in Kirk’s assassination. Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged for murdering Kirk and potentially faces the death penalty. He was romantically involved with his transgender roommate, and prosecutors have reportedly argued that Kirk’s anti-trans rhetoric was a key factor that allegedly led him to shoot the Turning Point USA founder.
Kent also argued that the US is not really in charge of its own foreign policy: “Who is in charge of our policy in the Middle East? Who is in charge of when we decide to go to war or not?” he asked.
Ther former counterterrorism chief argued that Israel forced Washington’s hand by saying it would attack Iran and that the US would be forced to be caught up in Iran’s inevitable retaliation.
“The Israelis felt emboldened that no matter what they did, no matter what situation they put us in, they could go ahead and take this action, and we would just have to react. That speaks to the relationship — but also it just shows there was a lobby pushing for us to go to war,” Kent said.
In addition to claiming Israel was driving US foreign policy, he also claimed Iran was not close to achieving, or even pursuing, a nuclear-weapons capability. “No, they weren’t [on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon] — not three weeks ago when this started, and not in June [2025] either,” Kent said, referring to last year’s 12-day war between Iran and Israel
“The Iranians have had a religious ruling — a fatwa — against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That’s been in place since 2004. That’s available in the public sphere. But we also had no intelligence to indicate that that fatwa was being disobeyed or was on the cusp of being lifted,” Kent added.
Experts on Iran have widely dismissed the Iranian regime’s so-called fatwa against having nuclear weapons, noting Tehran has repeatedly lied about and tried to hide aspects of its nuclear program.
The interview occurred one day after Kent resigned from his senior intelligence position, saying he could not support the war and arguing Tehran posed “no imminent threat” to the United States. But it was Kent’s broader assertion, that pressure from Israel and pro-Israel voices influenced the decision to go to war, that especially drew swift pushback from the White House and national security experts.
In his resignation, Kent also drew parallels to the Iraq War, suggesting that similar dynamics shaped both conflicts by arguing that Israel pushed the US into the war.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in his resignation letter.
The Trump administration forcefully disputed Kent’s claims, maintaining that the decision to strike Iran was based on credible intelligence about threats to US forces and interests in the region. Trump dismissed Kent as “weak on security,” defending the operation as necessary to deter Iranian aggression and protect American personnel and allies.
“When I read the statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out, because he said that Iran was not a threat,” Trump said. “Iran was a threat.”
Kent himself previously described Iran as a major threat that needed to be addressed.
In a September 2024 post on X, for example, he wrote that “Iran has been after Trump since January of 2020 after he ordered the targeted killing of the terrorist Qasem Soleimani. This isn’t a new threat.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lambasted Kent’s resignation letter as inaccurate.
“The absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable. President Trump has been remarkably consistent and has said for DECADES that Iran can NEVER possess a nuclear weapon,” she posted on social media.
Kent previously faced scrutiny during his US congressional runs in Washington state over links to far-right, antisemitic, and white nationalist figures, including Nick Fuentes.
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Brandeis Center Reaches Settlement With UC Berkeley in Antisemitism Lawsuit
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has reached a major agreement to settle a lawsuit it filed against the University of California, Berkeley in 2023 over its allegedly failing to address a series of incidents of campus antisemitism which culminated in anti-Zionist students establishing “Jewish-free zones” where pro-Israel advocates were barred from speaking.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the complaint provided several examples of alleged antisemitic harassment and exclusion on campus, including a bylaw banning Zionists speakers that 23 Berkeley Law groups adopted in September 2021, campus groups Women of Berkeley Law and the Queer Caucus requiring support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel to join its ranks, and the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, and Justice banning Zionists from submitting articles and speaking at its events.
The campus environment worsened after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught across southern Israel, in which the Palestinian terrorist group murdered over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 250 hostages to Gaza, according to the complaint. Indeed, the suit alleged that hate mail and death threats have been sent to Jewish students, that Jewish students have opted not to attend class because walking through campus risked encountering angry pro-Palestinian supporters, and that an anti-Israel demonstrator bashed a Jewish student draped in an Israeli flag over the head with a metal water bottle.
“As a UC Berkeley alumnus, I am glad that we can finally resolve this long battle with a victory for Jewish American students and for all Americans who care about free speech and fairness,” Kenneth Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and former US assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in a statement on Thursday. “What began as a ban on Zionist Jewish voices, regardless of the subjects they wished to address, and mushroomed into a widespread hostile environment will no longer be tolerated.”
He continued, “What happened at Berkeley is a cautionary tale. Universities, corporations, and political parties cannot create an anti-Zionist exception to their conduct codes. They cannot silence Jewish Americans on the pretext of advancing their own political agendas.”
The details of the settlement are disclosed. They call for Berkeley’s using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a reference tool, stating a “reaffirmation” of antisemitism as a violation of the code of conduct, conducting an annual survey of the Jewish student body, and appointing an official to manage the school’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination at universities receiving taxpayer money to fund research and other operations. UC Berkeley will also pay the Brandeis Center $1 million as reimbursement for “outside attorneys’ fees and costs incurred” during litigation of the suit.
UC Berkeley saw some of the most shocking antisemitic incidents in recent memory in the months which followed the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In February 2024, a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at UC Berkeley featuring an Israeli soldier, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach Hall while an event featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat — who visited the university to discuss his military service during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion — took place inside. The mob then stormed the building — breaking glass windows in the process, according to reports in the Daily Wire — and precipitated school officials’ decision to evacuate the area.
During the infiltration of Zellerbach, a member of the mob — which was recruited by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
“You know what I was screamed at? ‘Jew, you Jew, you Jew,’ literally right to my face,” the student who was attacked said to a friend. “Some woman — then she spit at me.”
In July, the chancellor of UC Berkeley described a professor who cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities as a “fine scholar” during a congressional hearing held at Capitol Hill.
Richard Lyons, who assumed the chancellorship in July 2024, issued the unmitigated praise while being questioned by members of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which summoned him and the chief administrators of two other major universities to interrogate their handling of the campus antisemitism crisis.
Lyons stumbled into the statement while being questioned by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), who asked the chancellor to describe the extent of his relationship and correspondence with Professor Ussama Makdisi, who tweeted in February 2024 that he “could have been one of those who broke through the siege on Oct. 7.”
In Thursday’s statement, Marcus implored the Jewish community to be unrelenting in its fight against antisemitism.
“As we have now seen time and time again, if left unaddressed, antisemitic bigotry, whether or not masked as anti-Zionism, only continues to expand. We will fight this bigotry wherever and whenever we find it, and we will win.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Ukraine Leverages Drone Defense Expertise to Aid Gulf, Strengthen Strategic Role Amid Iran War
Fire ignited at the impact site following an Iranian missile strike, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in central Israel, March 13, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Gideon Markowicz
As the US-Israeli war with Iran reshapes regional security dynamics, Ukraine is leveraging its battlefield-honed drone defense expertise to assist US allies in the Gulf, potentially strengthening its diplomatic standing and shifting the balance of power, experts say.
Earlier this week, a team of around 200 Ukrainian military experts arrived in the Middle East to provide both “expertise” and “practical support” in countering Iranian drones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that specialized units have already been deployed in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, with additional personnel en route to Kuwait, as Kyiv strengthens coordination with countries across the region.
Since the start of the war last month, Ukraine has actively offered its technology and personnel to Middle Eastern partners to assist the United States and its allies in countering Iranian drones, positioning itself as a key strategic player amid conflict and shifting diplomatic alliances.
Zelenskyy stressed that he had instructed government officials “to present options for assisting the relevant countries” in a way that safeguards Ukraine’s own critical defense needs amid the ongoing war with Russia and its relentless missile and drone attacks.
“Ukrainian experts will operate on-site, and teams are already coordinating these efforts,” Zelenskyy said in a statement.
Among a delegation of military, intelligence, and defense officials traveling to the Gulf was National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov, as the group worked to finalize what was described as “concrete agreements.”
“Ukraine has the greatest experience in the world in countering attack drones,” Zelensky said. “Without our experience, it will be very difficult for the Gulf region, the entire Middle East, and partners in Europe and America to build strong protection.”
“We are ready to help those who help us,” the Ukrainian leader continued. “The regimes in Russia and Iran are brothers in hatred and that is why they are brothers in weapons. And we want regimes built on hatred, to never, never win in anything. And we want no such regime to threaten Europe or our partners.”
According to John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, DC-based think tank, Ukraine has “unmatched experience” in developing and scaling cost-effective systems that can detect and neutralize the one-way attack drones widely used by Iran.
The Iranian regime has been supplying Russia with drones throughout the war in Ukraine, and Moscoe has been reportedly supplying Tehran with intelligence, satellite imagery, and drone technology to target US forces.
“With Russia working to help Iran kill American servicemembers, that’s all the reason for the United States and its Middle East allies to take advantage of Ukraine’s hard-won expertise,” Hardie told The Algemeiner.
“Replicating Ukrainian solutions at scale won’t happen overnight, but Ukrainian deployments to the Middle East could offer a taste of some of the Ukrainian technology, namely interceptor drone systems,” he continued.
Hardie argued that this expertise could help Ukraine “cultivate closer security cooperation” with the United States and its Arab allies, while also opening opportunities for Kyiv to expand its defense industry exports and strengthen its role as a key security partner in the region.
When the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran struck back quickly, firing missiles and long‑range drones at military and civilian targets in neighboring countries — repeatedly hitting infrastructure and population centers even as it claimed to be focusing solely on US military assets.
In just the first few days of the conflict, Iran launched more than 500 ballistic missiles and over 2,000 unmanned aerial systems (UAS) — remotely operated or autonomous aircraft commonly used for surveillance and strike missions.
Even though the regime’s ballistic missile launches have dropped sharply since then due to US and Israeli strikes on its launchers and broader missile program, its drone attacks are, while also down significantly, proving more difficult to stop with air defenses, threatening key military targets as well as civilian areas.
Some regional countries struggle to defend against Iranian drones because these low-cost systems consistently evade fighter jets and conventional air defenses. They have struck a wide range of targets — from diplomatic and economic sites to residential areas — including Dubai International Airport and Saudi oil facilities.
According to Jason Campbell, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank, Ukraine has revolutionized counter-drone warfare over the past three years through cost-effective, easily reproducible technologies and adaptive battlefield tactics.
“The Gulf states have invested heavily in high-end and highly capable missile defenses, but the Iran war has demonstrated the need for solutions that can better confront their comparatively inexpensive and easily reproduceable Shahed drones,” Campbell told The Algemeiner, referring to the Iranian-made drones.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Islamist regime in Iran began supplying drones to Moscow, providing a relatively inexpensive way to expand its long-range strike capabilities, which Russia later advanced by producing modified variants domestically and in greater quantities.
Over more than four years of war, Ukraine has dramatically improved its counter-drone strategy, increasingly relying on interceptor drones — low-cost unmanned aerial systems that detect, track, and destroy incoming drones identified by radar — offering a highly effective and economically sustainable alternative to traditional air defenses.
“I would say that this capability has already elevated Ukraine’s (and Ukrainian companies’) status throughout the Gulf,” Campbell told The Algemeiner.
According to multiple media reports, Saudi Arabia is planning a major contract with Ukrainian companies to purchase interceptor drones.
Zelenskyy has also suggested that Ukraine could “exchange” interceptor drones for Patriot air defense missiles, a US-made system designed to detect, track, and intercept incoming ballistic missiles, aircraft, and drones.
“Russia probably is not very excited about the prospect of Ukraine bolstering its air defenses and demonstrating its utility to an array of deep-pocketed clients,” Campbell explained.
“This is a win for US interests and could provide more impetus behind efforts to provide necessary assistance to help Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia,” he continued. “One thing to watch, however, will be the near-term availability of higher end air defenses which remain in high demand now in multiple theaters.”